When N.B.A. Players Go to Israel

On a Friday evening this summer in Jerusalem, several N.B.A. players assembled at Judaism’s holiest site. The squad included DeMarcus Cousins, of the Sacramento Kings, the league’s ascendant center, who is just under seven feet tall; his teammate, the thirty-five-year-old former All-Star Caron Butler, six-foot-seven; Chandler Parsons, a six-nine forward for the Dallas Mavericks; and Iman Shumpert, of the Cleveland Cavaliers, six-five, going without his usual flat-top, which adds several inches.

The players, gentiles all, stood in single file, awaiting the man at the head of the line. Standing at a self-reported five-foot-eight (some colleagues say this measure is generous), David Schottenstein is a thirty-one-year-old Jewish-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. The players he had helped bring to Israel were mobbed by fans who had come to worship at the Western Wall and then found something else to admire. Schottenstein began “literally throwing people out of the way, moving forward,” he recalled. “It was crazy. Iman was behind me, laughing his head off because he said he never saw such a small guy completely clear a path, like parting the Red Sea.”

Herded to the wall by their diminutive leader, the players touched its surface, said whatever prayers they liked, and found a crack in which to slip the personal notes they had written, as is traditional at the site. The four of them, along with a handful of other N.B.A. players, had been invited to the country by Omri Casspi, who became the first Israeli to play in the league after he was drafted by the Kings, in 2009. Last year, he started a charitable foundation under his name, intended to address what he sees as the vexed image of Israel propagated by American media.

“Throughout my six years in the league a lot of players asked me about Israel. ‘How is it over there?’ ‘I’ve heard good things,’ ‘I’ve heard bad things,’ you know. So why not come with me? You can see it through my eyes and through your own eyes—a different perspective from what you’ve heard,” Casspi said on the phone from Israel, where he is training with the country’s national team.

To finance the trip, Casspi reached out to Schottenstein, a well-connected acquaintance with ties to the N.B.A. Schottenstein founded a custom-clothing company called Astor & Black that supplies bespoke suits to professional athletes, who, sartorial preferences aside, often require them. (In 2011, he sold the firm to a private-equity group for $50 million, he told me, his first business coup. Astor & Black filed for bankruptcy in 2013; a former employee of the company bought most of its assets for less than half a million dollars last year.) Quick-talking and forward, Schottenstein said that he had little trouble corralling funds for the trip from corporate sponsors and private donors. He also made a contribution himself.

One of the contributions came from Sheldon Adelson, the American casino billionaire and deep-pocketed supporter of right-wing causes. Some commentators—including Dave Zirin, of the Nation, who wrote an open letter condemning the trip—seized on this detail, connecting the trip with previous efforts by Adelson to combat the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, an international attempt to penalize Israel for perceived human-rights violations against Palestinians.

The trip’s organizers are not shy about their own political leanings—during the last Gaza War, in 2014, Casspi tweeted, “600 missiles been fired from GAZA by Hamas in the last 4 days. NUMBERS DONT LIE. STOP LYING.”—but they bristle at the notion that the trip was part of an ideological program. According to Schottenstein, Adelson lent them a private jet to ease their travel, and also made a “small financial donation.” “Other than that,” he says, “there was no Sheldon Adelson agenda here. There was no political commentator on the trip trying to talk into these guys’ ears, telling them ‘x, y, z.’ None. Zero. Not one tiny bit.” (Adelson did not respond to a request for comment.)

Casspi similarly disavowed political intentions, and described the trip as a way to show his friends “his side of the world.” He spoke of sharing the pleasures of Israeli cuisine—hummus and falafel, in particular—and the wonders of the country’s history. He compared the trip to the San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker or the Denver Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari bringing friends home to their native countries. “Obviously Israel is a little different” from France (Parker) and Italy (Gallinari), he conceded. But the principle was the same, he said, and he didn’t want to see “any stupid articles, really ignorant articles, saying ‘Stop Israel.’ There’s nothing political about it. It’s about having fun.”

It was also, according to both Casspi and Schottenstein, about changing American impressions of the country, particularly the “super-totalitarian, apartheid image,” which Schottenstein dismissed as “bogus.” “When you tell someone you’re going to Israel and they’re not that familiar with Israel, they say, ‘Oh, be safe, be careful!’ They think you’re going into a war zone,” Schottenstein said. He sees the trip as a way to showcase the country’s safety and its freedoms. The schedule also allowed for extracurricular activities, especially in Tel Aviv. “We went out, stayed out pretty late,” Schottenstein said. “You think you’ve been somewhere that’s a combination of Florida and Italy: all these historical sites and important places to visit, and at the same time, all the amenities of going to Miami,” he added.

Judging from their social-media accounts, the players enjoyed themselves. On Twitter and Instagram, you can see DeMarcus Cousins and Iman Shumpert, at the Dead Sea, daubed head-to-toe in salt-rich mud, and the New Orleans Pelicans forward Tyreke Evans floating on the water’s surface in an idyllic trance (caption: “live life why hate”). You can see a beaming Chandler Parsons, adrift in a sea of fist-pumping young fans in yarmulkes. You can also see the players coaching children at camps organized by NBA Cares, the league’s community-outreach initiative.

“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” Schottenstein said. “You see these pictures on Instagram, on Twitter, whatever, obviously that has a tremendous impact informing people that it’s safe to come to Israel. Get off your ass and get to Israel. It will be, period, the most meaningful trip you ever take.” Casspi said that he imagines some kid “from Alabama or Dallas or Los Angeles” seeing his idols “travelling the world … going to Israel, saying, hey, he’s having fun there.”

The photos of Mediterranean relaxation attracted the attention of at least one sought-after demographic: other N.B.A. players. Casspi noted that planning for next summer’s trip is under way, and Schottenstein said that they have been contacted by the agents of “very, very, very high-profile, I mean top-five, N.B.A. players.” Schottenstein’s dream attendees are the Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James or the Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, who is the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player. Ideas for future trips include an exhibition match against the Israeli pro team Maccabi Tel Aviv.

“One of the goals is: the way people interact, get the information these days, a lot of it comes from things like social media. You’ve got a guy like LeBron with twenty million followers who are all looking at his posts, and he’s posting great pictures from Israel of him having a great time in this beautiful place,” Schottenstein told me. “That helps further its image as the only real democracy in the Middle East."

He said that the trips will continue to avoid politics. “None of these guys, I don’t believe one single guy has gotten up and made a public support of Israel against the Palestinians," he said. "No one’s done that. Nor do I think the next year’s trip is going to be interested in that.”

A few N.B.A. players expressed support for the Palestinians during the last Gaza War. These included Amar’e Stoudemire, who has explored his distant Jewish heritage in recent years, telling Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in 2013, that he observes the High Holidays and regularly consults New York rabbis. (That same year, Stoudemire's agent told New York that the player was filing for Israeli citizenship.) Stoudemire posted a photo on Instagram of Israeli and Palestinian children embracing under the phrase “Pray for Palestine,” then deleted it shortly after. Dwight Howard, the center for the Houston Rockets, who was briefly teammates with Casspi, in 2014, tweeted “#FreePalestine,” before he, too, quickly deleted his post.

“We talked, obviously, after he did it,” Casspi said of his former teammate. In subsequent tweets, Howard said that the hashtag had been a “mistake” and pledged never to comment on international politics again. (Howard did not respond to an interview request. Schottenstein mentioned him to me as one of the players he’d love to invite to the country, where he could “get an education on what’s what.”) “He didn’t know what he was saying,” Casspi said. “He apologized about it to me personally. I feel sometimes there’s such a misconception of what’s going on here.”

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